goldfinch on the new bird table

[blackfox]

spent quiet a few days running round various outlets looking for a new bird feeder table last week , scanned e.bay and amazon as well most of them have a house cover on which leaves the birds in the shade .just wanted a open deck one . nearly bought one in the range on sunday but they were left out in the rain and looked tatty for £24.99 others I looked at were well over £50 quid .. we popped into our local d.i.y small outlet on Monday and found the exact thing we were looking for at £14.99 .put it out yesterday topped it up with seed and the birds have taken to it already . right outside the living room window can see some good shots coming ..heres a starter from this morning

[sapper]

Lovely shot. I have hanging feeders away from the house, but I may put up a table too.

[blackfox]

if the weathers iffy I find it just as good at times to sit in the warm and shoot from the settee as here . just need to find some mossy logs now for making a scene up

[Olybirder]

Looks good Jeff. You are lucky to still have a local DIY store. Ours all closed down permanently in the past couple of years. And with Wilko closing too .....

Ron

[blackfox]

yeah got two in town ones part of a group of small stores and the others a asian owned one that stocks a enormous amount of stuff not top grade but good enough , we also have a screw fix that has good stocks

[Bobblejack]

If I put up a feeder like that we'd just get squirrels hoovering everything up! All our feeders have to be squirrel-proof, which is really annoying.

[MJ224]

Yes me too. If not squirrels it's jackdaws and pigeons. I feed them separately, they like to walk over the lawn picking up seeds etc, whilst the little birds use the feeders...

[Geo]

Made a bird table with a cage on, Blackbirds and anything smaller can easily get in, pigeons and squirrels can't. The problem with a roofless bird table is the food gets soggy after rain, for bird pics just put a posing branch close by! Can have anything up to 30 Goldfinches plus others at one time, costs me a mint in sunflower hearts!

[LadyG]

Now that's a great idea, because we get annoyed when the pigeons come down and hoover up all the seed we've just put out for the smaller birds. Might need to buy a table though, because currently we've got one of those 'feeding stations' which seem such a great idea at the time.

[Geo]

Can always just put one on the ground with a dish of bird food in the centre? https://www.nhbs.com/ground-bird-feeder-guardian

[antpitta]

Looks like a great set up (& an excellent "charm" of Goldfinch). We use a similar cage over a small ground feeder but otherwise the standard seed feeders have so-called squirrel guards which just seem to give the squirrels a better grip on the feeders! Now nearly up to our full mid-winter array of feeders with 4 seed and 2 peanut feeders (we'll add a couple of fat ball feeders if we get any hard winter weather). We rarely get Starlings and surprisingly few Wood Pigeons but the biggest feed "hoovers" are Jackdaws (up to 20 at a time) and Moorhens (sometimes 5 or 6 together) although these just spend their time under the feeders collecting what the Jackdaws pull out of the feeders. It does get expensive at times but we feel the pleasure we get from having wildlife in the garden is worth it.